College Leadership

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Welcome to Barnard, a premier college passionately dedicated to educating the next generation of women leaders, innovators, and change-makers.

Our students arrive on our leafy green campus in the heart of Manhattan from nearly every state and dozens of countries and from backgrounds of all types — but all are already strong, smart, and inquisitive.

Our leadership — Barnard’s president and administration — join forces with a committed faculty and staff and our accomplished alumnae to challenge you as you define yourselves as individuals with strong voices and bold streaks. Together, we make sure that Barnard women leave here even stronger and more resolute than you were before, ready to tackle and change the world and to excel in all you do.

President Sian Leah Beilock

Sian Leah Beilock became the eighth president of Barnard College in July 2017.

A cognitive scientist by training, President Beilock is focused on further developing Barnard as a singular institution. She is raising the College’s eminence in math, science, and technology to parallel its renown in the arts and humanities. Building on our unique relationship with Columbia University, President Beilock is increasing options for students to transition directly from Barnard into a range of master’s programs at Columbia, including international relations, public health, and engineering. She is also working to bridge the gap between college and life after college through the innovative Beyond Barnard office, and she is dedicated to ensuring that Barnard continues to attract a highly diverse student body deeply engaged with all that the College and the City of New York have to offer.

Prior to her appointment as President, Beilock spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, where, as the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and a member of the Committee on Education, she specialized in how children and adults learn and perform at their best, especially under stress. In her role as a member of the senior leadership, she served as the vice provost for academic initiatives and as the executive vice provost and an officer of the university.

Beilock won the 2017 Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association and a member of the National Academy of Kinesiology. Early in her career, she received awards from the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Foundation, the Psychonomic Society, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

President Beilock is the author of two books that have been published in more than a dozen languages — the critically acclaimed Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To (2010) and How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015). Her recent TED talk has been viewed nearly 2 million times.

President Beilock earned her bachelor of science in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego, and doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.